B312 Has good speed, good corner pushback, and is neutral on block. What's not to like about it? He has a lot of other really good options though. The point is opening people up with mixups that leave Liu Kang neutral or at advantage so that you open them up for corner carry or corner pressure. You really can expose the hell out of people and damn near flawless them using nothing but mixups, and I haven't really seen any other characters that can pull that off with the kind of speed he has (Except for the obvious like Sonya and Kabal of course).
Another good tool that I see is HEAVILY underused/underrated is his f+4. It really does put people on blast if you use it as a trip up tool. People tend to think it's done by mistake, try to punish it, but it actually leaves you NEUTRAL on block, or +14 advantage on hit, so you really can go to town and either whiff punish their fastest pokes. I've stuffed Katana's 6 frame poke [I think it's six frames?] and Kung Lao's Spin using this tech. I've also recently started incorporating F+43 into ENH fireball (or normal low fireball) which always gets people too, who think they can let go of block to press a button after F+4. Looks kinda like Rain's two kicks into roundhouse cancel. If the second kick hits and you shoot the fireball, the fireball follows them so you can continue pressure..
I'll find that after doing something like F+12 or 21 ENH low fireball, if they get used to the F+3 overhead coming out, I'll dash in and mix it up with a F+4 immediately followed by D+3 to open them up for almost anything because they tend to be so WTF in their reaction and at disadvantage because of the D+3 hitting, that they're open for B+312, F+3, or throw. (Or whatever else you can think of)
Stuff is really good. Another good tool is B+1 into Parry and B+312 to whiff punish pokes, F+3 overhead to catch jumps (Into F+12, B312), and you can of course do B+1 into bicycle kick which catches them if they let go of block, although it's pretty punishable so I don't really do that too much.
Instant airs are done with U/B+F1 in a really quick motion. Liu can get them so low to the ground it looks like he's still touching the ground with his toes. Hard to do consistently still for me though, still working on that.
EGP_Shoryuken I'll definitely have to try that tech out. It sounds like it may definitely help me gain some consistency with my IAFB game... Only thing holding me back from fighting Sonya IMHO is that I can't do the IAFBs fast enough to outzone her.
Finally, I like ending corner combos with B+2 B+3 which makes them splat, and then you can immediately follow up with D+3 or F+4 for a couple of options:
If F+4 catches them in the air (you can do this on reaction), you can juggle with B+312. If F+4 catches them on the ground, free mixup game. Pretty dirty. They may start to wise up and use wake up moves, but it seems that F+4 can stuff out wake up moves unless they're like, ENH Johnny Cage nutpunch or Sonya's ENH Cartwheel. Just block if you feel like it gets to that point and FCP accordingly.
After the first match with Kensou, you'll see my matches with Showtime from our last training session on the 17th where I start to apply some of this stuff. It's not quite as consistent, but the session Showtime and I had last night definitely helped with getting the things I'm talking about polished. At the time of the recording, I was more or less just figuring some of the stuff out.
Plus, I beat his Reptile and Sonya. ;P
http://www.twitch.tv/kombathouston/b/335625514
(Yes I realize now that Katana's roundhouse kick leads to the overhead)